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Wolf Explains His Random Act of Journalism

August 27, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number four. We've got Wolf Blitzer, ladies and gentlemen, explaining why he treated Debbie "Blabbermouth" Schultz the way he did. He was pretty hard on her. (Well, relatively speaking.) He kept challenging her with what she was saying being untrue. Before we play Wolf, let's play a little sound bite from me. This was Friday. I was attempting to explain Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer challenging Debbie "Blabbermouth" Schultz on their programs.

RUSH ARCHIVE: [B]oth random acts of journalism have involved Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper attempting to protect themselves. I'll tell you what I think it is. ... I think what it is is strictly their own reaction to Debbie "Blabbermouth" Schultz. I think it is so obvious that she's a partisan hack, it is so blatantly obvious that she is nothing but a robotic partisan hack, that they cannot afford to let the woman go by unchallenged.

RUSH: That's basically what I thought, 'cause people were asking. See, the thing is, why was it random, as in "random act of journalism"? Why? I made the point that this ought to be happening every day. Why do Democrats never get challenged? And when they do get challenged, we stop the presses and go, "Looky, looky, looky! Whoa!" which itself is a sign of just how miserably biased and out of whack the mainstream media is.

So I was trying to explain it: She is so over the top, they don't even want to be associated with that kind of hackery. Well, let's listen to Wolf explain it. He was on Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz on Sunday morning. And Kurtz said, "You've been getting a lot of attention lately, Wolf, for some pretty aggressive interviews. You did one with Debbie ["Blabbermouth"] Schultz, the Democratic chairwoman, pressing her on attacks that she's made on Medicare."

BLITZER: If you hear something that clearly is wrong, all the years of your journalistic experience should come to the table and you should point that out. As you get older, you say to yourself, "You know what? If I hear a guest -- and I'm gonna be polite to that guest and respectful. But if I hear a guest just dissemble and make stuff up and really say something that's wrong, I think we should at least point that out to our viewers and let them know that I'm not dumb enough to just go along with it or whatever."

RUSH: That's exactly right. It was so obviously over the top that Wolf had to draw the line. That's right. That's right. When he was younger, it would have been okay. But "all the years of your journalistic experience should come to the table and you should point that out. As you get older, you say to yourself, 'You know what? If I hear a guest -- and I'm gonna be polite ... But if I hear a guest just dissemble and make stuff up,'" as I get older, then I'm gonna call her on it, 'cause I'm getting better and I'm learning more stuff as I get older. When I'm young, I'm more eager to be a hack.

But as I get older, I realize I have to cover it up a little bit 'cause people are gonna think that I'm older and mature enough. (So that pretty much pretty much nailed it.) LA Times, by the way, has an article today: "Is CNN Looking for its Own Game Change?" And the sub-headline: "With the Republican and Democratic national conventions approaching, the news network is in a quandary about the direction it needs to take to regain its declining viewership, which some say might involve dropping its refusal to 'take sides' in the political debate."

Uh, new thinking? (laughing) Not take sides? (laughing) New thinking? With the conventions coming up, "the news network is in a quandary about the direction it needs to take to regain its declining viewership"? When has CNN refused to take sides? is the point. That's not their problem.